


Monsters Big and Small

by faerae42



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Hive Mind, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Original Character(s), POV Original Female Character, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21719533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerae42/pseuds/faerae42
Summary: Nyssa wakes up one morning and find that the world around her has changed over night. Now everything is monstrous, including herself.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Monsters Big and Small

**Author's Note:**

> I got the original idea for this story from a dream. I might expand upon it someday. I don't know if anyone is really gonna be interested in my random short stories, but I remembered that there was the original words section on this cite and figured I may as well do something with them. I hope you enjoy this story and the other one I posted. Also please let me know if I have used the ratings correctly here, as I am not 100% sure.

Nyssa wakes up slowly. This in itself is odd. She has always been a morning person, but today sleep clings to her like the last few grains of sand in an hourglass that just don’t want to give in to gravity.

The second odd thing she notices is that her left arm feels like there is something stuck to it. The feeling reminds her of how, when she was a child, she would put glue on her skin and let it dry, then peel it off again in great swaths. In the darkness of her room, between the waking and sleeping worlds, she finds herself doing this now, pick, pick, picking at her arm. But as she truly awakes the bizarrity of this becomes more apparent to her, and she switches on the lamp next to her bed to see just what she has been picking at. 

Then she screams and leaps out of bed.

It isn’t that there is something on her arm, but that the skin itself is peeling off. Beneath, what seems to be an iridescent blue shell gleams in the artificial light. She scrambles out of bed, only to freeze as she takes in the rest of her room. A monstrous congregation has gathered. 

The room is full of various creatures of different sizes, from as small as a loaf of bread to as tall as the bed itself. All of them are covered in the same blue exoskeleton that is coming through the skin of her arm. However, they also come equipped with razor-like silver teeth and claws that gleam in the light of her lamp. Their monstrous grins seem to take up half of their faces, and every so often a serpentine tongue flashes out to taste the air. They all seem to stand on four legs and have tails that curl up in a way that resembles a nest of gigantic scorpions. None of them have eyes, but all of them seem somehow to be staring at her. 

Her legs give out and she falls back onto the bed, but she doesn't scream again. Somehow, though God only knows how, she can tell that the beasts are not going to attack her. Instead they seem content to just sit around her as she stares back at them, frozen in shock.

Nyssa suddenly feels something cool pressing against her leg. She looks down and finds one of the creatures cuddling up to her. It’s one of the smaller ones, and the segmented plates of its armor clatter together as it rubs its face against her thigh. It almost seems as though the thing is trying to comfort her in its own strange way. This close, even in the relative darkness of her room, she can see that it has something wrapped around its neck. With slightly shaking hands, she reaches down and pulls the thing off the creature. It is a collar, complete with tags, which she slowly reads. 

“Mr. Mittens?” she whispers. 

It’s the name of her neighbor’s dog.

***

When she thinks about it, things had probably all started to change yesterday. It’s not like there was some great event that firmly marked the temporal border between before and after. Years from now, no one would be saying: 'Ah yes, I will never forget where I was the moment when it all changed'. The last day of the world before seemed normal. The only odd thing is that some sort of stomach bug seemed to be moving around the office. No one quite knew how to describe how they felt, just that something seemed off. Nyssa was no exception to this. She felt something that was a bit like a wave of coldness settling into her bones, but not quite. It was somehow too sharp for that. As it spread through her body her fingers slipped and she dropped her coffee cup. 

“Shit!” she yelped as the cup hit the floor, sending mediocre coffee and ceramic shards flying off in every direction.

“You alright Nyssa?” Danial asked, a look of concern in his light green eyes. 

“I’m fine, just… fine. I don’t know, I’ve been feeling weird all day.”

“Tell me about it,” Daniel laughed. “Half the R&D department’s out today, there's no way in hell we’re finishing this project on time. The way I figure it, we should all just sit back and relax until whatever this is going around the office blows over.”

“I wish I could” Nyssa replied, “but Walker’s been on my ass all week. Something about my reports not being detailed enough. If he catches me slacking off he’ll make a complaint to the higher-ups for sure, and that is not something I need in my life right now.”

Daniel sighed. “Well, if you can escape the vile machinations of the great Walker beast, swing back my way, okay? You’re the only one who actually listens to me when I read the horoscopes.”

Nyssa laughed. “Well you can’t really blame the others. Those horoscope things are ridiculous, what with their overdramatic language and the way they make predictions vague enough that practically everyone can see themselves in them one way or another.”

Daniel made a face that seemed stuck somewhere between teasing and genuinely annoyed. “Hey! I’ll have you know that these horoscopes are the genuine article. I’ve been reading them since I was a kid and they’ve never let me down so far. Just today mine said that change was on the way and it was time for me to take decisive action in order to ensure my place in the world. Just you wait, a promotion or something is right around the corner, and I’m gonna get it!”

“Whatever you say.” Nyssa gave Daniel a little wave and went back to work. She knew she shouldn’t tease him about his horoscopes, but he just got so easily riled up about the damn things. It was how Daniel had always been, constantly looking for some sign or short cut that would let him get ahead in the world. A lot of people found him kind of annoying because of his desperate ambition but Nyssa had always felt a bit sorry for him. It must be hard to live day to day when everyone is constantly dismissing you and putting you down. It was why she had decided to become friends with him in the first place. She always had a lot of empathy for the underdog, and had hoped he would mellow out a bit if he had someone to really listen to him. That hadn't happened yet, but you never know. People are always changing. Still, she’d apologize to him when she saw him later.

Except she didn't see him. Walker was breathing down her neck the entire day, and with so many people out sick they were utterly swamped when it came to work. By the time Nyssa was able to get out of there it was 9:00 and Daniel had made his escape hours ago. He was always good at that. Nyssa was exhausted, so she just caught the bus home, ate some leftover pasta for dinner and passed out on her bed, unaware that when she woke up the next day she would find out that the world would never be the same again. 

***

Nyssa has taken to watching the world fall apart through the blinds on her living room window. Whatever is happening hasn’t affected her alone if the horror show outside her window is any indicator. She’d seen a woman dragging herself down the street, sobbing as her body slowly but steadily turned to what seemed like stone. By the time she turned the corner and disappeared her entire left leg had been petrified, and Nyssa swore she saw patches of the stone breaking out on the woman's arms and face as well. Then there had been a man, or at least she thought it was a man, jumping from roof to roof of the houses across the street. There had been something wrong about the way he moved though, like his arms and legs had too many joints in them. Still, she couldn't say for sure, as he kept to the shadows until he was out of sight. 

After a time, Nyssa lets the blinds fall shut and slowly sinks to the ground. After her discovery about Mr. Mittens she had tried to call the police, but no one had picked up. How the fuck could something like that even happen? They’re the police for Chist’s sake, they should always be available in a crisis, that’s what they’re for, isn’t it? Unless of course there was no one left to pick up the phone. Maybe everyone in this entire town was feeling a bit on the monstrous side today. 

As Nyssa sits on the floor she tries not to pick at her arm, but it’s just so damn itchy. The hole in her skin is growing larger, and even if she doesn't scratch, sometimes her skin just sort of shrivels up and falls off of its own accord. It's not just her arm now either, she can feel the itching all over her body, little patches of dryness criss-crossing her legs, her back... her face. What will happen when all her skin peels away and only the shell is left? What will she be then? 

It’s then that one of the creatures curls up against her side, making a strange little chittering sound that vibrates through its entire body. It should be terrifying, this strange little thing next to her. They had been terrifying when she first saw them this morning, filling up every square foot of her bedroom, but they haven't hurt her so far. In fact, she is certain now that the little one is trying to comfort her. That it could feel the despair crawling through her veins and was doing it’s best to make it go away. She reaches over and scratches its head, and the vibrating intensifies. As she pets the thing she watches the way the light reflects off their matching shells. Whatever happened to her and the creatures seems to be changing them in the same way. But what did it mean? 

“You’re a strange little monster, aren't you,” Nyssa whispered. “Mind you, I guess we’re all a little strange now.”

Then Nyssa starts to feel odd, or at least somewhat more odd than before. At first she doesn’t really know what is happening, where the strange sense of calm is coming from. It is only as she continues to pet the thing beside her that she realizes the feeling is coming from the creature itself. She doesn’t know why, but somehow she can feel its contentedness, its feelings of safety and love as she runs her fingers back and forth over the top of its shell. The feeling grows stronger and suddenly Nyssa knows it is not just this little monster that feels this way, but all of them. They are all connected to each other and to her, invisible strings cross the distance and tie them all together in a massive web. It’s a weird feeling, touching the little minds of the creatures in the room with her. The are not human minds, and what with the cold, alien way they feel as they brush against her consciousness she highly doubts they are the minds of the fluffy companions they used to be. But in spite of the coldness Nyssa starts to feel at peace for the first time today. What she feels coming from the monsters around her is a love so pure it cannot be questioned. Love … and something else. Something more in keeping with the cold. Something like hunger. 

Nyssa drags herself up off the floor and walks over to the freezer. Usually it only contained freezer burned fossils that she could never quite get rid of without feeling guilty about being wasteful, but the big company picnic was happening on Tuesday, and Walker’s snide comments had implied that if she didn’t volunteer to provide some sort of food there would be hell to pay. She pulls out the two massive racks of ribs, thinks about it for a second, and drops them on the floor. The creatures are on them within seconds. She can feel their delight as their hunger is abated for the moment. But she knows this is not really enough. There is too little meat here and it is not nearly fresh enough. 

As Nyssa thinks about her next move she absentmindedly picks up a rib for herself. She takes her first bite, teeth not only tearing through the flesh, but crunching through the bone as well. As the need to feed takes over, she doesn’t notice that one of her molars pops out of her jaw and is swallowed with the rest of the rib. A silver fang slides down to take its place. 

*** 

The man, who before this awful day did not have quite so many arms, runs for his life. Dozens of little claws clatter against the ground, creating a sound not unlike knives being sharpened against stone echoing down the alleyway. No matter how fast the man runs, he realizes with dawning horror that he cannot escape them. 

Her creatures may have many bodies, but they move as one as they hunt their prey. It doesn’t take long before they have him surrounded. He’s gasping for breath, panic shining through his eyes. He lets out an ear piercing shriek as the creature on his right darts in and uses its stinger to pierce his side. Blood trickles from the wound as he thrashes trying to escape the creatures around him, but slowly his struggling becomes weaker and weaker as the toxin takes hold.

It's a paralytic, so he isn’t dying. Instead his muscles slowly betray him and he becomes trapped in his own body, unable to fight or flee. He is still awake as her creatures descend on him, and while the toxin numbs some of the pain, it is not nearly enough. The toxin forces his eyes to stay open. He is forced to watch as hundreds of teeth tear into his flesh. 

***

Nyssa jerks upwards with a gasp. She's sitting on her kitchen floor, bone fragments from the ribs scattered around her and her little monsters standing guard. She wants to tell herself that she fell asleep, that what she saw was just some sort of terrible dream, but she knows that isn’t true. Her creatures have started hunting to satisfy the hunger that eats them up inside. 

Nyssa should be horrified. She should be screaming at the top of her lungs and running from the things that fill the room around her. What she feels instead is a coldness that seems to be welling up from deep inside her. The ice in her veins keeps the horror at bay. It numbs her conscience like the paralytic numbed his muscles. A man is dead and he died horribly, yet she does not care. The creatures that killed him look to her for love and protection, and God help her, she loves them back in spite of everything. 

She slowly pulls herself up from the floor, and as she does so the last of her old flesh slides off her body like the remnants of a snake skin. The blue shell now covers her entire body. The chitin had grown over her eyes a few hours ago, yet somehow she can still see the room around her. In fact, her vision now extends farther than it ever has before, stretching right out of her head and into the minds of her little monsters as they move about in the rest of the world. Claws and fangs have replaced what were once her teeth and nails. For some reason her long black hair has remained, though it seems coarser now and has already tangled into thick mats that no comb could ever hope to defeat. She doesn’t seem to have the tail that her little monsters do, but somehow this makes sense to her. The cold inside of her whispers that this is right, that she is the queen and not the hunter. Her place is to lead rather than to chase down prey. 

She doesn’t know what is going on. In spite of everything that has happened she just stands there, staring out the window with her eyeless face. What's more, the new cold parts of her keep whispering in her mind that everything is fine. Isn’t it natural to love these monsters because they are part of her? Is it not good to love oneself? It whispers that it doesn’t matter that the man is dead, because he is only an other, something separate from her and the creatures around her. What is the purpose of such things if not to feed the hive? These thoughts terrify and comfort Nyssa in equal parts. No! She has to fight them, they cannot be her! They have to be something else. This cannot be what she has become. 

Of course it is at this moment of personal horror that something comes crashing through the window. 

It’s another sign of how much Nyssa has changed that she dodges with such speed. She only sees the shadow for a second before its’ impact turns the window into thousands of pieces of glittering shrapnel, but by then she has already leaped out of the way and to the other side of the room. 

Within seconds, all of the little monsters in the room have formed a living barrier between her and whatever just came through the window. Venomous tails stand at the ready and hissing fills the room as what was once a man slowly rises to its feet. As it takes a step towards her she realizes from the way it moves that it is the person she saw earlier tonight, the one who was crawling across the rooftops. Now that it’s so close she can tell just what caused its movement to look so wrong. It sags with every step it takes, as though all the joints in its body have been broken but somehow it is being forced to move anyways. Black goo flows from its eyes and mouth, darkening its face and chest with the ichor. It looks like a demented puppet covered in paint, invisible strings forcing it forward. 

The sound of crunching glass alerts Nyssa and her monsters to the presence of a second creature dragging itself through the window. This one appears to have once been a woman, but it moves in the same sickening way as the first one. It seems to care nothing for the shards of glass embedded in its body from its passage through the window. As Nyssa looks past it, she can see more of the things out in the street.

Suddenly, the front door slams open. Footsteps echo as someone walks in. However, these footsteps are sharp and solid, not at all like the dragging shuffle of the things before her. 

A voice calls out, “Yoohoo. Anybody home?”

Nyssa knows that voice, but she has to be wrong. It cannot be who she thinks it is. He would never be involved with these terrifying creatures that have invaded her home. Would he?

“Daniel?” Nyssa whispers in a voice that now seems too deep and rasping to be her own. 

Daniel grins as he steps into the room. His movement isn’t broken like the things around him, but the same black ichor that covers them seems to be oozing from his hands. What’s more disconcerting though is his face. In spite of the monsters that fill the room, a Cheshire Cat grin is firmly fixed on his features. 

“Woooh Nyssa, look at you” he laughs. “Man whatever is going on really did a number on you, didn’t it.”

Nyssa can’t seem to find the words she wants to say. This grinning maniac who stands at the front of a horde of nightmares isn’t the man she has known. This isn’t the person she’s shared lunches with every day for years, who she considered to be her friend. 

Daniel continues on, like nothing’s wrong. “It looks like you’ve got some new friends with you here. Don’t you think they’re a bit on the small side though? I mean, look at the guys I’ve got under my control here. They may not have quite so many teeth as your fellas do, but at least nobody is gonna be able to punt them across the room with a well placed kick. Why don’t you sign up for an upgrade my friend and join the little club I’ve put together?”

“Club?” Nyssa rasps.

“Yeah,” Daniel giggles. “These are my boys now. They ain’t much for talking, but they follow orders like a dream.” 

Nyssa cannot believe what is happening. “My God Daniel,” she whispers, “what have you done?”

Daniel just shrugs and gives her a smirk. “Hey baby, I’m just moving with the times. When life gives you mind control powers, make your own minions, you know? I’m taking decisive action man, just like my horoscope said. It’s destiny. I’ve always known I should be on top, and now I finally am. Now it’s the real losers in the world who are the ones who have to end up feeling alone, afraid and powerless. But that’s for dipshits like Walker, not you. You were always a pal to me, so I’m giving you a chance to come over to my side willingly. This offer involves no manhandling, no bludgeoning, no damage of your body prior to becoming part of the family. And once you’re in, you can trust me to take care of you. You won’t just be another foot soldier like some of these schmucks, you’ll be my boon companion, the sounding board for all my plans. So what do you say champ, ready to join the monsters?”

Nyssa could only stare at Daniel as he went through this rant. Was this what the world was now? Was Daniel really so twisted by what had happened as to think he could convince her to give up on herself because he asked nicely? Or worse, what if this was something that had been in him all along and whatever had caused the mutations had simply brought it to the forefront of his mind. And if that was the case, did that mean the cold thing in her head came from deep inside her as well?

It is then that Nyssa notices the blue moving behind Daniel and his puppets. At first there is a single flash, but the more she stares the more blue blurs she sees. When she reaches outside of her body to her little monsters she realizes that she can feel more minds than the ones gathered defensively around her. Her creatures are amassing from every direction, an army preparing to defend its queen. The reinforcements have arrived.

Nyssa starts laughing now, though it sounds more like the sound of stones being slowly ground together. This reaction seems to throw Daniel off his game. It makes sense really. The person that Nyssa used to be was sweet, but kind of a pushover in her own way. She liked to talk things out to make people see sense. That’s not who Nyssa is now though. Now she is a killer, and Daniel has just declared war.

“Oh,” she sniggers. “You want monsters Daniel? I can give you monsters, but I don’t think joining you is quite what they had in mind.”

What follows looks like a battle scene from some bizarre sci-fi horror flick. Within seconds her little monsters are in motion, simply charging forward through open windows and across the floor. The ones lower to the ground go for the legs, slashing hamstrings left and right, even severing whole limbs in one strike in some cases. Others leap from the shadows and land on the backs of the puppets. The room becomes a whirlwind of claws and stingers sinking into flesh, and Nyssa feel it all as if she were the one attacking in a thousand different places at once. It is not long before the puppets’ black ichor ends up splattered across everything in sight. 

Daniel puts up one hell of a fight, but his puppets fall under wave after wave of her creatures. They belong to her, and she accepts that now. She can hear their voices buzzing in the back of her mind, celebrating the carnage they’ve inflicted. The cold thing inside her smiles, and as she feels it unfurl in her mind, she knows she’ll never be rid of it. It’s part of her now. She is the queen of the beasts that run below, blurs of iridescent blue, silver fangs, claws and scorpion tails wet with blood. 

As she watches their movement, Nyssa considers her own fate. Whether the coldness inside her is alien in origin or from the darker parts of her unconscious, she can safely say she isn’t the girl she used to be. How can you be what you once were when you can feel so many other minds linked to your own? How can you be anything other than a monster when the thing that binds you to these inhuman creatures is made out of coldness and hunger? 

Before, she hadn't been a monster, but neither had Daniel, or so she hoped. He’d been her friend, a man more or less like any other, trying to live his life from day to day. Now look at him, mad with the sick power he had come to possess, making a kingdom out of his mindless subjects. Is that what she was now? 

She is so consumed by these thoughts that she doesn’t hear him until it’s too late. When she finally notices the thud of his steps she spins around, and there is Daniel himself, standing right behind her, manic smile spread across his face. 

“Welcome to the family,” he giggles, and with inhuman speed even faster than her own, he slams his hand onto Nyssa’s face. 

And all the world goes still. 

Then, slowly, his smile falls from his face and confusion lights up his eyes. “What?” he whispers, then yells in confusion and despair. “No! No they have to work! You have to become one of us! It’s the rules! Its destiny!”

A rasping chuckle stops his rant before it can truly begin. He looks up into the face of Nyssa, and now she sports a grin of her own that rivals the insanity of his previous smile.

“You thought you could take me?” she laughs, “You thought you could make me one of your own, Little Puppet Master? Just because you can warp a few scared little human minds doesn't mean you can take on what I am now, what I have become. But thank you at least for clearing some things up. I was so confused, so unsure of what I was becoming. I was clinging to what I used to be, and that let me be distracted. Why try to be human when the rest of the world has left us behind? Why not just embrace what I really am?”

Daniel takes a step back and stutters, “Wha... What are you?” 

“I am the cold thing,” she rasps, “The monster at the end of the book. I don’t yet know what I want with this world, but I look forward to finding out. You thought you were so tough, but it turns out I’m a far better monster than you will ever be. So now your little kingdom falls, for I am the queen of what's to come”. 

And with those words her mouth opens impossibly wide and razor-sharp teeth descend. Then, for Daniel, there is only darkness. 

***

The sun rises like it always does. There is no way to tell how far this thing has spread, how much of the world is full of monsters now, but the weather does not reflect this fact. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

Things rarely turn out the way you’d expect. After all, just because it’s the end of the world doesn't mean anything really has to change. And really, what does the end of one world mean on a cosmic scale, except for the start of the next. Maybe the change was a good thing. Maybe it was time.

The thing that was once Nyssa smiles to herself, or at least her face makes the closest approximation of a smile that it can these days. The smiles never come out quite the way they used too. There are just too many teeth. 

She runs her claws lovingly down the backs of the creatures that flank her. They are just two of the thousands of blue shelled monstrosities that are part of her hive, and more are arriving every hour. She can feel every single one of them through the coldness that ties them together, the web of frost covered wires that spreads from one entity to the next, linking them all. They are all bound together in strength, in love, in endless gnawing hunger. They are many and they are one. It is the way it is meant to be.

Nyssa lets out a rasping chuckle and looks over her shoulder to address her army. “Come, my little monsters. Time to meet the new day”.


End file.
